SUMMARY
Scientific studies point out that the feeling of psychic well-being can positively affect the patient´s state of health; reduce the amount of the used anti-pain pills, and accelerate the healing process. Stress is an important psychic aspect in this process. Stress is a psychological and emotional process that negatively affects the neuro-hormonal, immunological, muscular and skeletal functions, that is all functions that participate in the healing process. The psyche plays an important role at the start of an illness, and it fundamentally affects the course and the healing process. The reason for this is the central nervous system that can be irritated by failure of psychological defence thus negatively affecting the immunological system.
Improvement of the psychological well-being in hospitals is the core aspect of architectural design of hospital environments. A hospital should be understood as a complex of systems and wards where it is not possible to exclude any part when speaking of systematic architectural concepts. There are some scientific concepts that point out to the architectural functions in this respect. The Picker institute aims its activities to scientific research in the field of patient-centred care. Thus, the basic patient-oriented requirements of a suitable hospital environment have been defined.